INDIA: Rat Week

Bombay's health department, by using some
statistical mumbo jumbo, had concluded that the city's rat population
was 3,200,000 and that each rat's gnawing cost ten rupees ($3.02) a
day. When the city councillors heard that last week, they got into a
squabble along ideological lines.

Some conservatives suggested a Western-style solution: they wanted a
"Rat Week," with plenty of anti-rat ballyhoo, and, to stimulate private
enterprise, an increase in the present bounty of a half ana (1¢) for
each rat caught. Others objected that if the bounty were raised, it
would pay the city's poor to go into the business...